Graduate Education in the Humanities: The Need for Reaffirmation, Connection, and Justification. An Occasional Paper.

Pellegrino, Edmund D.

A human society that aspires to more than survival must search continuously for new knowledge; we are all the beneficiaries of the scholar's insatiable desire to know. Graduate study must be nurtured, and cannot ever be the sole preoccupation of academe. Today the crucial balance of things and humans is threatened by the erosion of support for and interest in graduate study of the humanities. The professions, such as medicine, are turning more and more to the humanities as part of professional study, seeking three things the humanities can uniquely contribute to human endeavor: (1) to serve as preferred vehicles for teaching the liberal arts; (2) to provide sources of knowledge not susceptible to scientific method; and (3) to enrich the lives of humans as humans. It is important to reassert these seemingly obvious uses of the humanities, even for the humanists. The liberal arts are indispensable to the survival of democratic societies, which survive on the strength of their citizens who possess a critical intelligence. As a result of changes external and internal to the humanities, humanists have retreated too swiftly before the popularity and successes of the sciences and the professions. Scholarship and research do not exhaust the value of the humanities to society, and it is the university's responsibility to prepare humanists who can cultivate the closer engagement of the humanities with practical affairs. (MSE)